Monday, June 8, 2015

The psychology of writing your first R01

Denial
Two months before the deadline: "I totally got this. I have it all figured out and will be able to whip it up in a month or so to give my readers lots of time to make it perfect."

Anger
One month before the deadline: "WHAT IS GOING ON? WHY IS THIS NOT WORKING? It made sense last month. Now nothing makes sense, the pieces do not fit. THIS GRANT SUCKS!!"

Bargaining
Three weeks before the deadline "Okay, if I move this piece and this piece and put them here....and then remove this...no, put this back...remove this other thing....rephrase this...rephrase this....rephrase this..."

Depression
One week before the deadline: "It's all useless. This is a worthless piece of crap. The study section will think I'm a loser. I should just skip to next cycle or maybe never write on of these again. What else could I be doing with my life? Maybe it's not too late to go back to school. Would it be a problem for admissions that I'm already a university professor?"

Acceptance
Two days before the deadline: "It's a decent effort, it makes no sense to keep changing it over and over again, so I'll pull the trigger now. At least if it gets discussed I'll get comments back. Need to get to work on the other two grants due in the next three weeks."

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About Me

I'm a biomedical research scientist venturing into starting an independent research lab in academia. The goal of this blog is to share my experience and new/interesting ideas about management and grant writing with friends and colleagues. All ideas expressed in this blog are my own.